The strange case of Alexei Navalny

The real idea behind building up the Navalnys is to get under the skin of the Russian political establishment. Source: Reuters

American commentators apply an entirely different yardstick to Navalny, while their peer group back home casts Anthony Weiner as the original sinner.

Muscovites need to take democracy lessons from New Yorkers. The two
metropolises are heading for Mayoral elections – Moscow in early September and
New York early November.

Both mayoral races have become exciting due to the presence of two
colourful candidates. The candidacy of blogger-agitator Alexei Navalny, who has
been convicted for illegal timber trafficking from state forests worth half a
million dollars, livens up the Moscow race.

The indiscretion of Anthony Weiner, former US Congressman, on the other
hand, stemmed from a compulsive weakness for what Americans call “Online sex” –
sending lewd selfies (pictures of oneself) to women he got acquainted with on
the Internet.

Unlike Navalny’s theft of state property, Weiner’s act was a private
affair. Yet, there has been an avalanche of criticism about Weiner and
editorials and national leaders in the US have urged him to drop out of the
mayoral race following the tawdry revelations about his escapades last
week.

Weiner didn’t steal a single dime, but he was forced to resign his
position as lawmaker in Washington and, as Christian Science Monitor reported,
“He’s dogged by hacklers on the campaign trail, as well as late-night comedians
giddy with jokes about Carlos Danger “selfies” and ex-chat paramour Sydney
Leathers.”

In comparison, all the animated discussions in Russia about Navalny
bypass the core issue, namely, he has a record of embezzlement of public
property and, therefore, ineligible to hold office. Ironically, it is on the
issue of corruption that Navalny built up his strange career in the blogosphere
from where he tiptoed into politics with magical ease.

It is even bigger hypocrisy that the American commentators apply to him
an entirely different yardstick when their peer group back home would cast
Weiner as the original sinner. To be sure, the strange case of Navalny raises
some big issues.

He went to Yale under an American scholarship and returned to Russia as
a freshly-minted public crusader – telegenic, English-speaking and audacious.
But does that absolve him of a criminal past? This is one thing.

The independent pollsters put Navalny’s rating as somewhere around 15
percent, which won’t stop incumbent mayor Sergei Sobyanin from winning outright
in the first round. The polls show that the people’s distrust about Navalny is
only growing and they feel troubled not only by his shady past but also by his
brand of Russian nationalism that pits Russia against Muslim Central Asia.

Despite the West lionizing him, Navalny looks less and less convincing
as a leader of a coherent opposition. And it raises a question: Is Navalny an
individual or is he a project? There is something sinister going on.

Why else should the National Endowment for Democracy [NED] sponsor a
22-year old Russian young thing, Vera Kichanova, to visit the White House in
Washington last week as “one of the faces of the new generation of political
opposition in Russia.” Ever heard of Vera?

The NED, which specializes in staging ‘colour revolutions’ in the former
Soviet republics, acted as recruiting agency, while Vera’s appointments in
Washington, DC, included Susan Rice, US national security advisor, Samantha
Power, US ambassador to the United Nations, et al and the high officials at the
White House and the State Department were eager to pick Vera’s mind about “what
the US can do to help promote reform in Russia.”

The spirited Vera promptly suggested to the Obama administration to
expand the Magnitsky List “to include others, like the people responsible for
the arrests of protestors on Bolotnaya Square [in Moscow in May 2012].”

The real reason behind such manifestly anti-Putin frenzy in the US needs
to be understood. Gangster capitalism began in Boris Yeltsin’s time. It was
Yeltsin who destroyed in 1993 the nearest thing Russia ever got as a parliament
by ordering tanks to fire shells on its White House home. Yeltsin nonetheless
enjoyed a good press in the West. There were no Veras hanging around Bill
Clinton’s White House. Why so?

There were two reasons. One, the only alternative to Yeltsin was the
Russian communist party, whose return to power was unthinkable for Washington,
which, therefore, duly ensured Yeltsin won the 1996 election. The second reason
was that a huge transfer of wealth was taking place from Russia, thanks to the
bizarre situation in Russia.

On the other hand, the post-Yeltsin Russian political system proved
“non-cooperative”. Vladimir Putin is an immensely popular national leader and
doesn’t need the US’ support for political survival, thanks to his assertive
international stance and his relatively successful economic policy, which saw a
higher trajectory of growth, drop in unemployment and rise in real wages.

Obviously, it meant that the sort of dizzying levels of influence that
Washington held over Yeltsin’s Russia has become a thing of the past. And, the
sort of “business opportunity” to fish prize specimens from the muddy pool of
Russian economy no longer exists as in those halcyon days of the nineties.

The real idea behind building up the Navalnys and Veras is to get under
the skin of the Russian political establishment.

Related:

The Russian opposition movement has lost its fizz although certain other
factors come into play here. The first is of course the nature of the Russian
intelligentsia, which is unique insofar as it has been in conflict with the
authorities for 200 years.

Secondly, a process of social stratification has been steadily going on
in Russia but it is too early to speak of a “middle class” protest. In the
ideological vacuum that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the western
liberal theory has been blindly imported, which needed to be adapted to the
Russian reality. Put differently, although the Russian middle class is becoming
a part of the global middle class and consumerism is taking hold in a big way
and it is becoming important for a Russian to earn money to buy and travel –
despite all this, a middle class that has been used to “average prosperity” is
today dreaming of earning money as in the western capitalist system.

Those who have been successful are keen to preserve their privileged
position by possessing power or by virtue of proximity to power. In sum, the
society is coping with the power of money, adapting to the new reality that
even if money isn’t everything, it is “almost everything.”

This process of adaptation will take time and it is directly related to
building a market society that makes people aware of their interests and
rights. Therefore, the danger of carrying the over-centralizing process of the
past decade or so – stemming from the compulsion to construct a viable state
out of the Soviet rubble and to stem the meltdown of state structures and the
economy under Yeltsin – exists, but to an outside observer, Putin’s intention
seems to be not to allow that danger to happen.

This is where a fair and chaotically free election to the Moscow Mayor’s
post in early September will help to ease the current tension. But the
complexity of the situation Putin is dealing with as such will not dissipate,
because it also involves the adaptation of the Russian society – tearing itself
away from its usual environment and changing the outlook to the global
parameters, which also means understanding itself better.

Democratization, given Russia’s history, is accompanied by
“destabilization,” leading to numerous conflicts in the country and the lack of
“control.” Of course, destabilization will be destructive for any country and
the authorities need to bring back the stability in society and put the
government back in order.

All in all, therefore, Russia is passing through a historic cycle and
the rites of passage cannot be determined by anyone other than the Russian
people. Putin sees that this cycle remains incomplete without constructing its
vital underpinning – a genuine rule of law. This is where the absolute freedom
granted to Navalny to garner his optimal strength in a free election – and to
lose conclusively – becomes at once interesting and extremely important. Weiner
will be lucky to get that far.